Drink dispensers are today a quite common feature within refrigerators, supplying customers with chilled and/or filtered water. Known drink dispenser systems can either have a main pipe connected directly to the inlet, or in some solutions the system is connected to a reservoir for supply of liquid such as water. Some of these systems may also be equipped with a cooling device in which the liquid can be chilled and stored, and at a later point in time being dispensed. Furthermore some systems also have a carbonating unit for adding carbon dioxide to the water. An example of such a prior art system for supplying of cooled and carbonated water or other beverage is disclosed in EP 1974802. EP1974802 discloses a cool drink dispenser having a main pipe connected to a supply source to receive a beverage, a metering valve connected to the main pipe to receive the beverage and designed to permit controlled outflow of the beverage from the main pipe into a container positioned temporarily beneath the metering valve, an in-line cooling unit located along the main pipe to cool the beverage flowing along a first portion of the main pipe and an in-line gas-adding unit located along the main pipe to add a gas to the beverage flowing along a second portion of the main pipe. The in-line cooling unit comprises a number of electric fans which, on command, circulate, inside a compartment of the in-line cooling unit, a stream of cold air at a temperature below a freezing temperature and/or a stream of hot air at a temperature above the freezing temperature. The fans are able to alternate and mix the two air streams to bring the liquid inside the tubular body to, and maintain it at, around the freezing temperature of water or other beverage. In particular, by controlling cold and/or hot air streams provided by cooling means the percentage of water in the solid or semisolid mixture state does not exceed a predetermined maximum threshold of the maximum capacity of the cooling unit.
A drawback with known prior art systems is for example that when frozen liquid is formed in a cooling unit, the ice that builds up is often not perfectly homogeneous, hence there is a risk that the cooling unit become obstructed. Another problem associated with prior art systems is to be able to offer variable temperature of the dispensed beverage. A further problem with in-line systems is to be able to carbonate the beverage in an efficient way. Even a further problem for some prior art systems is to detect a water level in a tank that supply beverage into the system.
Hence there is a need for an improved drink dispensing system.